Hacker News Reader

If you're afraid that general purpose computers are going to be destroyed by the iPad, you have far more faith in the level of success it can achieve than I do.

If you're not, jacobulous's ridiculous hypothetical scenario isn't worth treating seriously. And I treated it with all the lack of seriousness I believed it to deserve.

View on HN

I'm not scared, but I think it is worth to look out, because this kind of scenario has already happened, for instance with web-based mail: webmail is convenient, limited, and pervasive. Plus, spam is evil. Result: most ISPs block the outgoing SMTP port without too much complaints.

Now, imagine that devices like the iPad are the majority (like Windows is now). Plus, viruses and netbots are evil. Result: Trusted Computing everywhere.

This is of course the extreme, very unlikely scenario. However, this is so serious that I think it is worth to watch out, even knowing that the odds are almost nil.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com